Scotland Road Trip Part 1 - The Mainland

 

Welcome to the first of three posts about my Scottish Road Trip! Schools here have 3 terms and half-way through each term they have a mid-term break for a week. So, I had to make the most of it and decided to go to Scotland!

 

After searching all my transport options, it was significantly cheaper to hire a car in London and drive up. I would have preferred to fly and rent a car locally but the flights alone were £490 and I got a whole 10 days car hire for just £380.

 

Day 1 Friday

I took all my stuff to school and after school I headed straight to the airport. They gave me a brand spanking new VW Golf with just 12 miles on the dial. Woohoo! According to Google Maps, it was approximately a 6.5hrs trip. Traffic was unfortunately so unbelievably bad that it took me 9 hours! 9! I was so tired but I had to keep going. I made it to my hotel 10 miles outside Glasgow at 1am. I was originally staying in Glasgow but it is currently under Level 3 restrictions so leisure travel in/out of Glasgow City is banned. I pretty much crashed out and fell asleep straight away.

 

Day 2 Saturday

I woke up really early and began the long drive to the Glenfinnan Viaduct. This is a big train bridge that was used in the Harry Potter films, and several times a day the Jacobite Steam Train passes over it, recreating the movie. I made it with good time and began the uphill hike to join the hordes of people sitting on the side of the hill waiting. After about 30 minutes, it finally came. It was awesome! It travels quite slowly and the driver does a little whistle.

 

 

 

 

Next up for the day was a 1 hour drive to Fort Augustus for a boat cruise on Loch Ness. Fort Augustus is a cute little loch town and the weather was amazing. There is a loch system that connects the river to Loch Ness and it takes 1 hour for a boat to go from top to bottom. The cruise is a 50 minute trip with a talk about Nessie and the history of the Loch. It is up to 300m deep and a constant 10^oC. There are lots of theories of what Nessie might actually be, with one of the more likely ones being giant eels. Apparently a “monster” with a long neck and looks like a swimming dinosaur cannot physically live in the Loch due to the water conditions and food availability so it definitely isn’t that!

 

 

Next up was a drive to Drumnadochit, which is half-way along the Loch. Here there is a ruined castle called Urquhart Castle. It is right on a cliff overlooking the loch so it has awesome views. It is an interesting set of ruins, but not huge so doesn’t take long to explore.

 

 

 

Then it was time for the long 3.5hrs drive back to the hotel. I was knackered by the time I got back after having only 4-5 hrs sleep for 2 days in a row. I was also hungry so I decided to try the restaurant next to the hotel. It is called Tom’s Carvery and serves traditional English roasts. The way it works is a bit different. You get a table like normal then you head up to the carvery. There some staff members serve you your meal. You choose normal or king size, which meat you want (pork, beef, gammon, turkey) and then choose your vegies (roast potato, beef dripping potato, mashed potato, potato bake, mac & cheese, stuffing, cheesy cauliflower, creamy cheesy spinach, carrots, peas and gravy. And of course, Yorkshire puddings. They were huge! The size of a large male hand! The staff load the plate up with a huge amount of food and you can go back for unlimited vegies. It is only £7.99 for normal size so you get value for money but the amount of people I saw ordering the king size and the amount of food on them was a bit frightening. No wonder we have obesity problems!

 

Day 3 Sunday

I was up a bit later which was nice. After a cruisy breakfast I headed up to Falkirk to see The Kelpies sculptures. They are huge horse head metal sculptures in the middle of a park. Pretty awesome!

 

Next was a trip to the Falkirk Wheel. It is the only rotating boat lift on the planet. I wasn’t overly sure how it worked from the photos but I watched it and went for a ride on it to learn. We boarded canal boats and then the boats went into the gondola of the wheel. We then got lifted up to the top of the loch and had a short presentation before going back down. The trip takes under 5 minutes one way. The gondolas each weigh 600 tons, with or without a boat. They built it based on Archimedes principles of water displacement. Check out the video below of it!

 

Next up I decided to head all the way across the country to St Andrews. I know of this place only because it has a famous golf course and I saw it on Getaway a long time ago. There is also a big ruined cathedral and graveyard. By the time I got to St Andrews, a thick sea fog had rolled in. The ruins and graveyard are free so I had a walk around checking out all the tombstones and cathedral bits.

 

 

 

After a late lunch I drove to Edinburgh, which was my stop for the next 2 nights. I booked a pod in a hostel right in the centre of Old Town, on the Royal Mile. This meant I had to park elsewhere though as parking is limited in town. Not that I had paid much attention to the geography of Edinburgh, but I found out the hotel is UP the hill from the carpark. A long 15 minute uphill walk with a suitcase. After checking in, I decided to walk the streets and have a look around. There are so many beautiful old buildings! I spent 2.5hrs just walking around taking photos.

 

 

 

 

Day 4 Monday

I started with an early morning visit to the Palace of Holyrood House. It is only 15 minutes from my hostel so nice and easy to get to. It was VERY foggy! I ended up being first through the gates! Best photos for me! It is an interesting palace, and is one of those ones that are decorated in that gold gilding and very elaborate artworks & tapestries.

 

 

 

 

I then spent a few hours shopping the Royal Mile. I really wanted an authentic Scottish wool scarf but had to find the right colour pattern. Took a long time but I ended up selecting a bright pink stole made in Scotland from 100% extra fine baby cashmere. It is sooooo soft! 

Another place on my list for today is Dean Village. Just on the edge of the city, at the bottom of a hill of course, is a small village with a canal running through it. It is a lovely little escape from the city sounds and only a 25 minute walk from the Royal Mile.

 

By now it was very humid and my feet were not happy with all the cobblestones and hills so I took an Uber to The Elephant House. It is the café where JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books so it is officially the Birthplace of Harry Potter.

I wanted to check out the Royal Britannia Yacht too so I took the car out to Leith. It was closed due to the Bank Holiday so I could only see the outside. Next time I visit Edinburgh I will have to tour the yacht.

 

After a few hours of chilling, I went out for a ghost tour. It is called the Terror Tour and runs late at night (10pm), unlike a lot of other tours that run at 6-8pm. It is day light until 10.30pm at the moment so not spooky for a ghost tour when the sun is shining. This tour starts with a history of the torture & deaths of the city and then a tour of the South Bridge underground vaults. It is also an over 18’s tour so nothing is off limits. First up we walked down the Royal Mile to a few locations where they used to hang people & kill people. One punishment for being a smart ass for a kid was to nail the kid to the door by his ears for a few days. When his time ended, they would grab the kid’s ankles and pull him off, ripping his ears. The theory was that the naughty people were physically scarred and thus easily observed in public. This is where the name “tearaway” comes from. After a few more stops we head down a hill to a set of apartments. The city is heavily layered, with some layers still undiscovered and unexcavated. In the 1980’s a few students discovered the long lost underground vaults in their living room. So the tours goes to the apartment they lived in and has a small torture museum of some delightful implements. A few notable ones were the bamboo splints to go up your fingernails, the ball breakers to chop off testicles, the flesh grabbers, the face melting mask and the leg bone crusher things. Gross. I am so glad I was not alive when these things were used!!

 

So then we move to the next room in the house and gain entry to the tunnels. Remember this is a ghost tour and these are underground 1700’s vaults. There is no electricity, only candles and phones for light. This particular section of the vaults is also considered the most haunted place in Europe, and possibly the world. Now I am afraid of the dark. The dark is home to the boogeyman and monsters. I don’t like it when I hear unknown noises and I watch too many horror movies. Our guide has been doing these tours for years and she kept telling up of her paranormal experiences as well as those from other visitors and photos. I was the only solo person there which I think did NOT help. So the tunnels are wet, cool and supposed to be silent. There is 2 layers of vaults both above and below so there is zero environmental noise, light or airflow. Straight up she tells us the story of a poltergeist known as The Watcher or Mr Books. He is not nice, mean and angry. He stalks the vaults and attacks visitors to make them leave. He is tall, wears a long black cloak, carries books, stinks of stale whiskey and tobacco and walks with heavy boot steps. She then showed us a photo a previous visitor sent them and my little panic starts. I am truly fascinated and dead set terrified. She told us where he is most commonly seen too. We move along the tunnel looking into several vaults. She tells us the stories associated with each one. There is a man who murdered a woman on the steps in the tunnel, and both the man and woman have been seen by visitors. There is a clergyman who has been seen in the occult vault. And in the final vault there is a child, little boy, who likes to hold the hands of women of child-bearing age as he is looking for his mother. In the occult vault is a stone circle. People are no longer allowed to go into the circle as bad things happen when they do apparently. Some people go nuts, some have full blown panic attacks, some get aggressive and one had a heart attack! All the while we were listening for sound. It is incredibly terrifying to be in a sealed tunnel with no external access, and no environmental noise, to be standing there and hear footsteps outside the vault. Or the sound of something being pushed across the floor. Just after we started the tour, after we heard about The Watcher, we were advised to take loads of photos because you just never know. I was standing with a girl while she took a photo of the tunnel end (Watcher territory). When she looked at it and zoomed in, there is a clear image of a man. Dead freaking set! This is when I got quite afraid. I am afraid of them hurting me and he does hurt people. He pulls their hair and clothing. In one of the last vaults, our guide gives us a taste of the darkness. We are inside one of the vaults and I sidled up to another girl because I was not going to stand alone while there were all these ghosts around, including The Watcher, in the pitch black darkness. She held my hand (what a nice girl) and we stood in the darkness while our guide told us another story. The noises are infinitely more terrifying when it is dark and we could hear every single one of them. By now I am in a full panic. After a bit one of the guys let out a yell and then everyone starts screaming and jumping and moving. He got grabbed on the leg! My fear boiled over and I ended up in tears. I was absolutely done. I wanted to go. I was shaking, completely freaked and terrified I was going to be attacked by him. Fortunately the guide left the torch on after that. In one room, our guide had her hair pulled and clothing tugged. Another girl had her hand touched. And you could 100% smell whiskey and tobacco in certain areas. When we finally got back out to the outside I was so relieved but anxious. I went back to my room and had to lay in bed with the light on because I could not be in the dark. I had a look through my photos and I think I may have caught The Watcher in one of them. So before the tour, I was a semi-believer in ghosts. I saw something at Port Arthur in Tassie when I was a kid, but questioned what I saw as an adult. Now, after my experience in the tunnels I am a believer. You may think I am nuts but go do the South Bridge vault tours (by Auld Reekie tours, the only company who does this one) and see for yourself. I won’t be sleeping properly for weeks!!

 

Day 5 Tuesday

This morning I was up early to get a head start. I had booked tickets to Balmoral Castle for 10am. It is a small castle and was built and used as a holiday house, not a palace. It is not palatially decorated, no gold etc. It has deer heads & antlers and lots of wood. The audio tour takes you through the grounds and you see the vegetable gardens and rose gardens. The only internal part of the Castle you can visit is the Ballroom. The rest is off-limits to the public. It is located way out in the middle of a forest, with very little phone reception. It is very peaceful and quiet. Because it is small, it only took an hours to do the whole lot. There are some bush hikes you can do but that’s not my thing.

  

From there I did the long 4.5hr trip right to the top of the mainland, John O’Groats. It is the end of the land and has a signpost for visitors showing directions. It is 847 miles to Lands End, which is the very bottom of the mainland, in Cornwall.

 

Last up for the day was my ferry ride! I made my way to Scrabster to take the ferry over to the Orkney Islands. Right now, I am sitting on the ferry writing this post. I think we are nearly there. Then I have a short 30 minute drive to my accommodation in Kirkwall.

 

Stay tuned for part 2 of my trip: the Orkney Islands!